A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
The "fuck em" comment was put in to show how uncentral and meaningless that feeling is is if we allow for everyone to get to the polls and participate without getting blown up. I don't like them - but that shouldn't matter, and, if they get to vote, it doesn't matter.

I think whether our project there succeeds or fails will depend on a lot more than whether everyone gets a chance to vote. They voted under Hussein, too.

I submit that a philosophy that holds that we have to count votes that intentionally are not cast, just so we don't offend those who already see that they are a minority in a new democracy, is the first huge step away from a democratic Iraq. You talk about us guiding results that we want - this is the worst sort of such guiding. If this is to succeed, it won;t be as some bastardized affirmative action plan for minority voters. This is an attempt to make Iraq into one country - not three or four always-diverging interest groups who will "balance each other out".

You really seem to be missing the point, so let me try again. Suppose a world in which, in the 2006 election in Maine, only five people show up to vote for Maine's two congressional representatives. Maine still gets its two seats, because under our system, the seats are apportioned on the basis of population.

In the Iraqi election to be held next month, if only five people show up to vote in one of the Sunni provinces, they will be unrepresented, in essence and in fact, because the number of seats they get in the parliament (or whatever it's going to be called) will be proportionate to their share of the total votes case, not to their province's share of the population.

So this is not about "counting votes that are not cast."

First, I'm tired of you always siding with Bush.

Heh.

Second, the Sunnis don't find a democratic government to be illegitimate - they find a government that they don't control to be undesirable. Big difference. If you want to build democracy by imposing anti-democratic principles, you're taking the kind of short-sided stance that seemed to have characterized so much of our history in South America. I think we either need to work towards democracy, or get out, and not try to fashion some Rube Goldberg let's-make-everyone-happy kludge.

I'm sure that many Sunnis would be happy to have a democratic government, even though they will be outnumbered by the Shi'ites. They apparently have fewer guns, or something.

And what anti-democratic principles do you think I'm advocating? Aren't we both talking about how to "work towards democracy"? My point is that holding elections that predictably will exclude and marginalize the Sunnis is a good way to prevent Iraq from seeing a meaningful democracy anytime soon. You seem to think that if we hold a vote in which everyone has a chance to vote, our role is done.